<nettime> endurance

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

-


endurance
 test

 for seven and a half years i've typed at least one work a day, well
   that's not true, there have been several period, the longest three
   days without incoming

   my mind continues to function in this obsessive-compulsive fashion -
    addiction to writing/inscribing: attacking the very body that
    sustains it

    there are most likely seven-hundred texts a year, five-thousand
     two-hundred fifty texts to date, almost all titled, arranged or
     arraigned in numerous files

     produced on perhaps forty computers, a massive edifice or alpha-
      betic substance or continuous lettering which is almost on the
      order of a family squabble

      there are orders and orderings, and there are viral disruptions
       produced by the same, there is a tendency to construct genre
       and collapse it, abjectly

       these are letters coming out of mouth, anus, penis, streaming
	from pores, letters spewed from eyes and ears, nostril-letters
	barely upright, struggling

	at night i'm never left alone - they regroup, gather again,
	 begin another attack - i wake with phrases forgotten in the
	 morning, damning myself

	 awake, i attempt the long or philosophic form, fleeing the
	  aphoristic, drawn back into the maw, writing on the run, in
	  exile, sickness or flight

          taking on other genders, identities, lives, subjectivities,
	   running through reals and virtuals, breaking down even self-
	   referentiality, recursivity

	   the production of texts which carry the body into states of
	    incessant trembling, the fingers broken on the keys, keys
	    broken against the furious assault of language

	    irrelevance of the body, enormous sheaves of texts, files
	     and circulations, routings of collapsed desire, outlines
	     and articulations

	     careful display and explication of theoretical work in
	      every state of development, ultimately the style of
	      letters, their massif

	      intellectual manque in spite of it all, the hunger for
	       brilliance, recognition, for the specificity of worlds
	       under or beneath construction

	       continuous maintenance of worlds, worlding through text
		and distribution, the skein of subjectivity just be-
		neath the surface

		seven and a half years of scratching the surface of
		 surface, riemannian folds collapsed chaotically, one
		 or more placements daily

		 the carriage of the real


_



#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net